Theater seating, or: The bad old days.

For those of us of a certain age, we remember going to the movies and rushing to get the “best” seat in the house. Maybe you were a fan of the seat in the exact center of the theater, physically or acoustically, or maybe you like to sit in the back row, or maybe you were even one of the weirdos that liked to sit in the very front row, breaking your neck to look straight up at the huge screen.

Whatever your preference, early arrival and seat saving were paramount to having a satisfactory viewing experience.

With the advent of stadium seating in movie theaters, comfort was able to supplant location, at least for a bit.

The final evolution of movie theater seating, however, came when seats started to be numbered and rowed and sold by that location. Like a big game of movie theater Battleship (copyright: Mattel), buying tickets became a game of, “is E-14 available?”

Fast forward to now, and I cannot help but notice a disturbing trend whenever I go to see a movie. People are coming in, tickets in hand, and scouring the seating horizon, pointing and discussing, before finally walking slowly up the steps, pausing at one row, moving on, then cutting into another row, only to point to some random seats, look at one another and nod, before settling in for the movie.

The whole point of this post, of course, is simply to ask this question:

What the fuck seat does it say on your ticket? Can’t you read? Are you so special that if someone comes in with the ticket for the seat you’ve simply claimed, are you going to get uppity if (not when, because some people are sheep) they claim their seat, which they selected and paid for?